Last month, I didn’t cheat. I could have. But I didn’t.
I am a late 30-something mom. I’m closer to 40 than 35. Closer to 50 than 20. Most of the time, I don’t feel it. Or I don’t care. I’m so stuck in the morass of kids, nonstop kids. I have three children ranging from ages two to six. And while I work, I work part time and from home, so I am with those kids a lot.
It is hard to feel sexy when you feel like a mom. When the majority of your day is spent cleaning up literal and figurative shit.
Last month, I went away without my family to visit old friends. It was the first time I’ve gone away by myself since having kids, six years ago. On our last day there, we went wine tasting. Then we went wine tasting again under the auspices of dinner. Then we went wine tasting again at a local bar.
For the first time in ages, I felt like – myself. I didn’t feel like a mom. I didn’t feel like a wife. I just felt like me, like uncategorized me.
At the bar, I momentarily found myself alone. Oddly, there was a Sandra Bullock movie playing on the screen. Being at the stage of alcohol consumption when everything you see is worth commenting on, I commented, “Odd choice for bar programming.”
The man at the reciprocal end of my commenting turned around. And I felt it. I felt that electric pull of instant attraction. And I felt too that pull of nostalgia – a nostalgia for my single days, my days of flirting with abandon and casual touches that really aren’t.
We bonded over Sandra and what type of wine to order while I waited for my friends to reappear. He worked at a nearby winery, which meant he had more adjectives to describe wine besides “great” and “yummy,” which is about the extent of my ability.
My friends reappeared and he joined us at our table. As we talked, our foreheads gradually came closer together, our bodies unintentionally excluding the rest of the table. I felt so drawn to him. I felt alive. I felt unburdened, except for the piece of metal around my ring finger. That ring that I couldn’t seem to stop covering and recovering with my left thumb.
He got up to order another beer, touching my shoulder as he left.
“Why don’t you just sleep with him,” one of my friends joked. “Hey! I’m married!” I cried in mostly mock indignation. “He obviously likes you. He touched your shoulder!” another friend exclaimed. Apparently we were back in high school now.
But there was no denying it. He did like me. And I liked him. I liked the sun-kissed wrinkles around his eyes. I liked his comfort with this strange group of women. I liked the way his hand felt on my shoulder. I liked the way I felt when I talked to him. Confident. Funny. Sexy.
He came back to the table and our worlds contracted again, nestled into each other. And then suddenly, they broke apart.
“Uber’s here!” my friend called. There must have been some discussion about its summoning, but I had missed it.
“Oh,” I said getting up. “This seems abrupt,” I apologized to him.
He said goodbye to my friends, and then came to me. He hugged me close and whispered in my ear, longingly. “Why aren’t you single?” And then, “Well, it’s obvious why you aren’t.”
Despite my knees melting to the ground, I somehow managed to walk out of there. Though all the blood felt like it was in my lips, wanting to be kissed. That night, in the safety of my friends, I played it casual. But I was rocked. In the ten years that I’ve known my husband, I have never felt so desperately this pull.
I tracked him down. Of course I did. The vineyard he worked at was small, and it took exactly one google search to bring him up, and one click to see his Facebook page. Scrolling through his timeline, it was clear we weren’t a match. He was a Bernie man, a hardcore environmentalist, perhaps someone who took himself a little too seriously.
But even so, I felt so drawn to him. It was all I could do not to message him.
I reached out to my friend. “It’s normal,” she said. “But do not message him.”
“What about just to say that it was nice to meet him?”
“No. You are in withdrawal right now,” she said. “Your brain is actually detoxing from the flood of hormones. If you want to replicate it, you may as well just take a hit of heroin. It would be just as hard on your marriage.”
Five, ten, twenty times over the next few days, I thought about messaging. And each time, I didn’t. What would I say? And as more time went on, was there any way to contact him without seeming like a complete stalker?
A few days more, and withdrawal was complete. At least it was complete from him. But I’m still detoxing from that night. I’m left with this nagging knowledge that it’s not him that I want – I mean, not really. I made the choice that night not to cheat. My marriage is too important to me and the guilt would be too hard to take.
Instead what I want is to feel that part of me again. That single me. That confident, funny, sexy me. I want to be looked at by someone like it’s all he can do to keep from kissing me. I want to be looked at by a fresh set of eyes, eyes that haven’t seen me poop the bed three times while pushing a human out of my vagina, who hasn’t seen me crouched on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night covered with berry-strained toddler vomit. I want to be listened to by someone who hasn’t heard all my stories, who doesn’t know the punchline yet.
I also realized that I may not have that many more years when I am objectively attractive. When some handsome stranger will hit on me at a bar. And while that shouldn’t be important, while it feels inconsequential even as I write it, I know it’s my truth.
And so, here I am. One month later. Loyal, but lost. So deep in the maze of motherhood that I seem unable to find myself. Back to prompting “please” and “thank you,” back to turning other people’s dirty underwear the right side out. Back to mom. Away from me.
This writer has chosen to confess her lust anonymously